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All Gael Schneider and her husband could think about was escape -- escape from their house, from the nightmare of knowing what happened to their daughter.

Nicole Pietz, a petite blonde who loved to laugh and had a fondness for dogs, disappeared seven months ago. She was 32 years old.

A passer-by found her naked body near Sea-Tac Airport on Feb. 6. She had been strangled. The case remains unsolved.

For more than four months, Schneider and her husband, Rod, have roamed the United States in a 38-foot Monaco motor home, leaving behind their retirement home in Surprise, Ariz., on a road trip not of discovery, but of distraction.

"The whole purpose is to keep my mind occupied," Gael Schneider said, speaking by cell phone as her husband drove through Colorado this past week. "Every place in the house, I could see Nicole."

The discovery came two weeks after Pietz's husband, Martin David Pietz, 29, had last reported seeing her. Pietz declined to talk to a reporter for this story, referring calls to his lawyer.

Now investigators want to re-examine evidence they've already gathered, including his wife's computer, in the hope of extracting more clues.

Recently, the case was assigned to Detective Raphael Crenshaw, a veteran of the Green River Killer investigation, who filed a search warrant affidavit earlier this month asking for more tests.

Detectives plan to retest portions of Nicole Pietz's 2003 Volkswagen Jetta, take a closer look at a laptop and desktop computer taken from her home, her work computer, and a memory stick she used.

The last person reported to have seen Pietz was her husband. Martin Pietz, who usually goes by his middle name, David, told investigators he last saw his wife around midnight Jan. 27. She was already in bed, he said, and planned to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Renton the morning of Jan. 28, a Saturday. Nicole Pietz had substance abuse problems in her youth, but had been sober for years and never missed a meeting of her AA group.

Barbara Arionus, 62, attended those same meetings. She had called Nicole, who was her sponsor, the night before the meeting to make sure she was still going, but Pietz didn't answer and never called her back.

That Saturday, the two were supposed to meet for coffee, but Pietz didn't show. Arionus dialed her cell phone, but got no answer. The meeting began with still no sign of Pietz. At the first break, Arionus called again. When it became clear that Pietz was not coming and the meeting was nearly over, Arionus said she had a gut feeling that something bad had happened.

"My heart just fell," she said. "I felt something wrong."

At some point that Saturday, David Pietz learned that his wife had not made it to the meeting, Pietz told investigators. He did not learn this from Arionus, who did not know how to reach him.

That same night, the couple was supposed to share a dinner with friends. Nicole Pietz missed that, too.

David Pietz said he called friends trying to find his wife, but without success. Tamara Vanderheyden, a friend of Nicole's, said David sent an e-mail about 10:45 p.m. Jan. 28. She got the e-mail about an hour later.

"I immediately called him," Vanderheyden said.

David Pietz filed a missing person's report with the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office the evening of Jan. 29. For the next several days, family members and friends worked frantically to find Pietz.

Then, her body was found.

Her personal items -- driver's license, credit cards, cell phone and a BlackBerry -- were missing. Her car was found later that month in a parking lot near the University of Washington. But even that discovery didn't lead to any arrests.

Hoping to jump-start the investigation, in March, Gael Schneider and her husband offered a $10,000 reward for help in solving the case. Some people called in tips, but police don't know if any were prompted by the reward.

As the months have passed, some who knew Nicole fear that people are beginning to forget her while her killer is at large.

Gael Schneider said she plans to travel to the Puget Sound area next month, maybe hold a rally to revive interest in the investigation.

"The more publicity the better, especially as time goes on," said King County sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart. "You never know what will come out of the woodwork."

In May, David Pietz gave his wife's two cats -- Peaches and Calvin -- to Arionus, who is keeping both until she can find a good home for them.

She talks to Gael Schneider regularly.

"Most of the time we'll start by talking about good memories, and pretty soon we'll start bawling," she said. "It's something that should never have happened."

For Gael Schneider, the pain of her loss is constant, no matter how many miles fly beneath the wheels of her motor home. Her daughter is everywhere.

In New York, the U.S. Open tournament reminded Schneider of her daughter's skill in tennis.

In Oklahoma, at the site where the Murrah Federal Building once stood and 168 people died in 1995, she wept, knowing what it is like to lose someone to violence.